The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Ger Gerradon stood in the septentrional aspect of earth, his porcelain-white doll’s eyes reflecting none of the firelight. Birth, life, death and rebirth were his aspect. Facing the leader of the Luperci in the meridonal position of fire was the floating figure of the Red Angel. Both stared at one another with crackling intensity, immaterial monsters bound to mortal flesh.

One a willing host, the other a willing sacrifice.

The book had enabled Horus to learn much of the Red Angel’s origins on blood-soaked Signus Prime. Just as it had allowed him to pass the rites of summoning to Maloghurst.

The words Horus spoke were not words as such, but harmonics resonating in an alternate plane of existence like musical notes or a key in a lock. Their use reeked of black magic, a term at which Lorgar sneered, but the term fit better than his Colchisian brother knew.

With each couplet, the chains encircling the Red Angel pulled tighter. All but one. Its armour creaked and split still further. Hissing white flame licked at the cracks. The chain encircling its skull melted away, dribbling from its mouth in white-hot rivulets.

‘Is that wise?’ asked Noctua as the Red Angel spat out the last of its binding.

‘Probably not, Grael, but needs must.’

The Red Angel turned its burning eye-sockets upon Horus.

‘I am a weapon, Horus Lupercal, the agonies of a thousand damned souls distilled into a being of purest rage,’ it said. ‘And you keep me bound with chains of cold iron and ancient wards? I hunger to slay, to maim, to wreak havoc on those that once called this shell brother!’

Its words were like hooked barbs drawn through the ear. Anger bled from the daemon, and Horus felt himself touched by its power.

‘You will have your share of blood,’ said Horus.

‘Yes,’ said the Red Angel, sniffing the air and licking its lipless face with a blackened tongue. ‘The enemy host musters before you in numbers uncounted. Millions of hearts to devour, an age of suffering to be wrought upon bones of the dead. A wasteland of corpses shall be the playthings of the letters of blood.’

Noctua turned to Ger Gerradon and said. ‘Are all warp things so ridiculously overwrought?’

Gerradon grinned. ‘Those that serve the lord of murder do enjoy some bloody hyperbole, certainly.’

‘And who do you serve?’ asked Horus.

‘You, my lord,’ said Gerradon. ‘Only you.’

Horus doubted that, but this wasn’t the time for questions of loyalty. He required information, the kind that could only be harvested from beings not of this world.

‘The death of my father’s sentinel in the mountain has revealed many things to me, but there are still things I want to know.’

‘All you need know is that there are enemies whose blood has yet to be shed,’ said the Red Angel. ‘Unleash me! I will bathe in an ocean of blood as deep as the stars.’

‘No,’ said Horus, unsheathing the claws within his talon and turning to stab them through the chest of the Red Angel. ‘I need to know quite a bit more than that, actually.’

The Red Angel screamed, a blast of superheated air that billowed the roof of the war tent. The chains creaked and spat motes of flickering warp energy. Cracks spread over the daemon’s face, as though the flames enveloping it now had license to consume it.

‘I will extinguish you,’ said Horus. ‘Unless you tell me what I want to know. What will I find beneath Lupercalia?’

‘A gateway to the realm beyond dreams and nightmares,’ hissed the unravelling daemon, cracks spreading down its neck and over the plates of its armour. ‘A ruinous realm of madness and death for mortals, the uttermost domain of misrule wherein dwell the gods of the True Pantheon!’

Horus pushed his claws deeper into the Red Angel’s chest.

‘Something a little less vague would be better,’ said Horus.